10 comments:

Sometimes the signal is just noise that you attach meaning to. This is called apophenia.Now it turns out that this light bulb over the colonel's head here is the same identical Osram light bulb that Franz Pokler used to sleep next to in his bunk at the underground rocket works at Nordhausen. [...] But the truth is even more stupendous. This bulb is immortal! It's been around, in fact, since the twenties, has that old-timery point at the tip and is less pear-shaped than more contemporary bulbs. Wotta history, this bulb, if only it could speak -- well, as a matter of fact, it can speak.

I am currently reading "The Man Who Japed" an early, mostly unsuccessful novel by Dick. I wonder why Hollywood and visual artists are still into Dick. His successful novels are great to read no doubt. His manipulation of literary devices that are typically used by writers to simulate 'reality' can be disorienting and lead to an intense immersive experience. He is great at intertwining out of body or intra-subjective experiences or points of view with experiences that readers think are straight forward narrative threads taking place in a simulated 'real' world. Maybe that is it. Is it happening in a characters mind or outside of their interiority? Of course as a writer Dick has to walk a fine line when he dissolves 'reality' in this way.

The fault line running through all this involves the question of the “proper” use of sexual imagery in art. Do we ever allow it as an end in itself, or must it always be redeemed by some aesthetic, social, moral or ironic purpose? Can pornography be high art? Indian and Japanese artists raised it to that level in pre-modern times; literature is loaded with great erotica, from the Marquis de Sade to “The Story of O.”

On the other hand, whether because of aesthetic convictions, prudery or politics, the modern art worlds of Europe and America have not appreciated the idea of art made for sexual arousal. But why should that be any less worthy an aim than, say, trying to inspire religious feelings? Mr. Ramos may not be the answer to the contemporary sex-in-art question, but he surely belongs in the conversation.

Schizophrenia may blur the boundary between internal and external realities by over-activating a brain system that is involved in self-reflection, and thus causing an exaggerated focus on self, a new MIT and Harvard brain imaging study has found.